抄録
Human activities have a tremendous effect influence on the environment of enclosed coastal seas. Increased population and economic growth have caused increased pollution loads to those areas, leading to the degradation of water quality. Enclosed coastal seas are characterized by various factors and, accordingly, those factors should be properly considered in environmental management Those factors are classified to three categories: natural, socioeconomic and aquatic environmental factors. In this study, 25 enclosed coastal seas in Japan, in which 13 showed degradation and 12 showed improvements, have been subjected to discriminant analyses to determine the linear discriminant function of 12 factors. Twelve of the 13 degraded seas were correctly discriminated using the function of 92 % success, and eleven of the 12 improved seas were correctly discriminated with 92% success. We tested the performance of the discriminant function for using 24 enclosed coastal seas and the result ware correctly discriminated with 92% success. The linear discriminant function thus obtained was used to estimate the relative importance of the factors embedded in the function and to provide sound guidance for future environmental management.
